


Watershed

by Crankygrrl



Category: Terminator - All Media Types, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 07:23:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10566444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crankygrrl/pseuds/Crankygrrl
Summary: There's a moment when the future becomes real.





	

You’re nervous when you arrive for your ultrasound but you’re used to it. Nervous has become a way of life. 

No, not nervous: wary. You avoid crowds, never enter a room without looking for the exit, always sit with your back to the wall – always.

It made your first visit with Dr. Boen… interesting. Then you dropped your eyes like you were embarrassed and said you were recently been the victim of a violent crime. You stood there – 18 and pregnant, Snow White pretty, walking with a cane – and waited for him to pull a chair around the desk, away from the door. Now the chair waits for you when you walk into the office, angled so you can watch the door while he discusses your blood pressure (a little high), your weight (a little low) and asks you the standard questions (your answer never changes, he never looks like he believes you). 

Today, the nurse takes you into a new room and hands you a gown. She gestures to the folding screen open across the back corner of the room and you go behind to change. You brace one hand against the wall and toe off your boots, waiting until the door closes to stick your head out and check that you’re really alone. 

You hate this part. The .357 presses against the small of your back like a lover’s touch. Without it you feel naked, more naked than you do lying with your feet in the stirrups. 

The gun was a gift, a get well present from the senior deputy in charge of your protection detail. You spent four weeks in a San Jose hospital after Kyle Reese died while your leg – pinned back together where shrapnel shattered the femur – healed. For most of that time, you were a material witness in the largest mass murder in state history. The LAPD were assholes but you got to know the Santa Clara deputies guarding your door pretty well. They were nice guys, the kind who didn’t like leaving a teenage girl without a way to protect herself.

The day you were released, Deputy Winfield drove you out to a range by the airbase. He gave you the gun – a snub-nosed, .357 mag, 5-shot revolver – big enough to put down a man, small enough to carry in your purse. Not that you carry a purse. You don’t like anything tying up your hands. The cane drove you fucking crazy. 

Winfield gave you the gun and told you to forget how you got it. He showed you how to load it, how to care for it and how to shoot it. You fired so many rounds that day. You pulled the trigger again and again until your wrists ached and you could barely lift your arms. After, he dropped you back at the hospital with the gun tucked into your waistband, two speed loaders of 124-grain JHP weighing down your jeans and the knowledge that the next time you met the machine, you’d maybe slow it down. 

He thought it was just a matter of time until the killer tried for you again. You don’t disagree. You carry the gun everywhere, carry it against your skin, where you can draw it in a hurry. 

You hide the gun in your boot, fold your clothes and set them on a chair with the boots on top, as close to you as possible without being obvious. Then you sit on the edge of the examining table and you wait.

The gel is cold. You suck in a breath when the tech squeezes it onto your stomach and smears it around with the probe until there’s a chilled, sticky layer of slime across your whole midriff. The baby’s heartbeat whooshes through the machine’s speakers like a needle scratching across vinyl. There’s a pulsing white point on the screen and the tech tells you that’s your baby’s heartbeat. The probe moves across the curve of your belly and you see arms, hands, fingers, the monochromatic outline of a head, a face. Something thumps inside you and on the screen a leg kicks. It’s the weirdest thing ever. 

Then the tech wheels the machine away and the nurse hands you a towel. She tells you to get dressed and then you’re alone again. Except for the thing rolling around in your stomach. 

Six months ago you were a full-time student and a part-time waitress. You had a scholarship that almost covered your tuition and plans to transfer to a four-year school. But you’ve already forgetting which major you’d picked because five months ago, a machine from the future tried to kill you. It killed two women with your name, 17 cops, your best friend, your mother and the man you loved but you survived. And because you survived, in four months you will give birth to the most important child since Christ. Or you will give birth to a little girl whose name will never be spoken like a prayer by a desperate man who looked at you like you were the only beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Either way, life as you knew it ended five months ago and you're not sure you're ready for what comes next.


End file.
